Clown
by TactfulTourniquet
Summary: "It's been four months." he said. Quiet, but understandable. He hesitated barely. A laugh. Choppy. Almost hissing, mangy as the blood stuffed snarl of a wounded cheetah. "It might as well be four years. Makes no difference." "You'll never forgive me." Will was silent.


**Hello :)**

**This is a OneShot, written for the topic of Sylvester FuriarossaAndMimma's Fannibal-Fanmagazine concerns /  
You can find her drawings on tumblr and deviantart.**

**It's definitely worth a look. She has some awesome ideas and is a lovely person ;3**

**In this scenario, Hannibal has killed Abigail, but took wounded Will with him and now they live in Florence. Four months have passed and New Year's Eve is approaching. What do you think will happen? Go and read it^^**

* * *

**Clown**

_the clown_  
_an endless_ _effort_  
_to hold back the tears_

_~ Anke Maggauer-Kirsche ~_

* * *

Sparks licked, driven by a hesitant hunger, over splintered wood fibers until they rose in a glowing and flickering cascade and caught fire. Like the dry, starved arms of a harvestman the flames suspended in another feast, rubbed at edges and corners of the other logs that were randomly scattered in the toothless mouth of the fireplace, savaging on the brittle, hard body of its prey. And soon, too soon it crackled and snapped across the room as if one chewed on bones. The orange-red glow of the furious light source reflected dull and rumbling in bluish glass that was not glass, but much richer and more satisfying than this.

Vital. Enraptured. _Precious._

The taste of gooseberries, heavy apple and passion fruit accompanied the macabre / exquisite view Hannibal Lecter took in his chair, Will's shape, illuminated by the Florentine evening that flowed lazily and naked through their open windows and the glow of bright fire hearth, was a constant fixture in his blood brown eyes. His place was on the other side of the room, his body stretched out on a long couch, belted in Jet black leather, gazing searchingly to the fireplace which induced heat groped his face, rubbed it with warm colors. He was dressed in casual clothes, a simple, sea blue shirt in fine wool, clinging thin-skinned to his body and dark trousers leading to bare feet. A few of the ivory buttons were aired by the collar and sparsely exposed the trembling flesh underneath. Milk-colored skin that had befallen to a delicate tanning during the months they already spent in these peaceful climes, gleamed dully in the dark bluff of the atmosphere.

"You're very silent lately."

Hannibal's accent impregnated baritone cut thick and tart through the air.

Will continued staring into the fire unabated. He did not look at him. No jerking of his body, no too hastily turned breathing sound foreshadowed if he had heard him. But he had. Hannibal knew that he had done it. He knew the profiler often better than himself, had made it to his spirit-sapping task to undermine him with his eyes and thoughts, inside and outside. Until every last, tiny detail was defined in his catalogue of memories. Will just ignored him. A phenomenon that occurred more frequently in recent days, as Lecter would have liked. There was something amiss, writhing in the roaring chest of the former profiler and Hannibal felt it like a weight, lurking on his spine and looking with three rolling eyes over the plain scratches and nicks, inspecting the past. He put down his glass where still an excellent rest of wine swirled and stood up. His fingertips walked forebodingly over Will's veiled abdominal wall, as he sat down next to him, his senses bathing with efficient greed in the cocktail of fragrance, pulse and respiratory breath, a mixture Will exuded in boundless amounts.

" Will?"

His touch was extremely tenuous, barely noticeable, but Will shrugged anyway, otherwise didn't move an inch. Hannibal knew this reaction already, it occurred every time, once he approached the scar adorning the left side of Will's lower abdomen in any form. The _phantom pain_ as the doctor knew. Too late acting muscles and tendons, feared, overwrought tingling flesh. Hannibal inspected the pale strip of skin, surrendered by the slipped shirt fabric, with particular interest. (Or was it_ pride_ ?). He idolized the scar he had imprinted on Will's body on that tragic evening with an almost feverish delight. He loved the inescapable message that screamed over the pasted, knobbly stacked tissue, calling out to the world. That Will Graham was someone's property. **His** property. Regardless of whether Will resisted or not. He was too deeply ingrained in his psyche to face him with honest rancor or contempt. Because then he would also despise what Hannibal had released in him. And the horror of his own self would have natured immeasurably.  
Will, however, seemed to be tired of snubbing Hannibal. He turned idly on his back, brushing the elder man gently with nebulous ocean seemed impassive, his gaze unusually empty. A shell,the sweet fruit flesh had been scraped from.

"I don't sleep well." he murmured. To confirm his words he let out a hardly stifled yawn. Hannibal saw shadows, deep as graves, clinging under his lids.  
His eyes wandered over the even, soft-cut face, forehead smoothed from earlier wrinkles of anxiety and the beard stubble that sprouted on his jaw. A wild growth of auburn curls framed the profile in a dark wavy rim. He tasted the sight like a banquet. Finally, he was mesmerized by the lips, focused his mouth, watched it open up like a calyx, freed of overlapping petals, and locked before him again shortly afterwards.

"Nightmares." he said, no doubt in him. A statement, more than ever.

"Nightmares." Will repeated monotonously. "I watch Abigail die. Every single time ... anew. She calls my name." Abruptly, he turned back to the fireplace. For him, the conversation seemed complete.

_How rude_ it whirled cool in Hannibal's thoughts, but he remained calm and composed. He reached out a hand, hid it on Will's warm / rough cheek and directed him into his previous position, slowly, so that their eyes met again. Will did nothing to prevent it, neither clung to the foreign / known heat, yet he sought to escape from it and maybe it was exactly this absolutist **nothing** that overran Hannibal's nerves with a shiver, more disturbing than any act of brutality the other man would have been able to commit. And Hannibal knew better than any other being in this world, what Will Graham was capable of - he had discovered him after all, encouraged his mind to follow its true nature. Student and teacher, apprentice and master – a shared bond, strong as tree trunks, hard and unbreakable as onyx beads. Still, he could feel the barrier of aloofness that rose between them. It let his skin tingle. He did not like it. It did not fit into the design he had planned for this evening - for both of them. Tonight, when the last ring of day ran through the streets, the population would practice Sylvester.

Personally, Hannibal wasn't enthusiastic about such festivals, but this event served him in a rather formidable manner as symbolic occasion. The beginning of a brisk stage in both their existence, an act that had been worth all those hardships they had conquered / promoted / destroyed / survived. He felt it as a not underestimating homely scene, to stand with Will in the darkest shadows of the night, observing how colorful lights bordered the black sky. With an expensive glass of champagne in hand, ready / eager for the future and what it might bring. Hannibal was tempted to launch his personal triumph by covering it secretly with other parties. One method that would not be suspected by Will and thus not displease him. For him, Hannibal's sort of triumph equated Abigail's death - cruel, split in his penetrating confusion and guilt and morally highly incorrect. This perfidious triumph was _he_. And he knew it. His chest rose and fell in now creepingly coordinated rhythm. His breath ran as bound in silk from his lips, shimmered scattering in the tightly woven air. Hannibal's thumb, soft and dangerous, drove in constant gentleness on the skin wrapped cheekbones. He could have crushed them. A few learned grips, the knowledge given by several years of surgical activity, a delicate, weak point to exert enough pressure and... it would have been easy, too easy.

Hannibal did not really think about hurting Will. He only speculated, weighed out potential opportunities. Not seriously, but how would his mood express itself within the next few minutes about this? Since they had settled in Italy, he was inspired by an uncharacteristic vacillation. High and low, bitter and pungent, hot and cold. In one moment he liked to take Will from behind and bury his nose in the curly mop, smell him, inhale him (consume him). In another moment he wanted to take a scarlet scarf and wrap it around the fragile throat, maintain and pay attention to how the younger man wrestled desperately for oxygen, his cheeks bleaching in suffocated blue. He was a reptile on two legs, a chameleon. A snake descaling itself, if it was required to strip down its skin like film. He was both. Everything and nothing at the same time. He was a shapeshifter who sought to forget his original appearance.

"It's been four months." he said. Quiet, but understandable. He hesitated barely.

A laugh. Choppy. Almost hissing, mangy as the blood stuffed snarl of a wounded cheetah.

"It might as well be four _years_. Makes no difference." it resounded. A lifeless whisper, scarce and inferior. Hannibal's hand slipped from Will's cheek to his hair, plowed through the thick curls. They danced like dark, wiry velvet between his fingers, the hot skull boiling underneath. The feeling of universal gravity spread through his limbs like a second pair of bones.

"You'll never forgive me."

Will closed his eyes, gave a humming sound of indignation.

"Stop it. We've talked about this topic often enough. "He leaned on his elbows, made a move to get up. Hannibal was displeased, but he did nothing to stop him.

"It hasn't changed the fact that it upsets you." he continued blithely, watching as Will walked across the room. The fire threw a sinewy shadow on the ground. "Will, talk to me."

"I'm tired of talking." was the reply. The profiler turned his gaze away from him. He was very pale around the nose. Finally, Hannibal saw himself forced to do something as long as the stubborn man wasn't convinced to stay and be polite otherwise. He also rose from the couch and went after him.

"Will?" No change in his tone. Maybe a hint of menace, an uncomfortable farce.

His arm stretched out, his fingers covered Will's wrist.

The next second, Will tore himself from him so quickly that the doctor's fingernails scratched his skin inadvertently and left bright red welts on his palm. Hannibal took the reaction like a mental fist. Eyes, glowing in anger, stared at him, dug into the substance of his soul.  
"Don't touch me!" the profiler spat. Each syllable soaked in fermented loathing. _For me or him?_ it circulated in Hannibal's calculating mind. _Maybe both_. He made no further attempt to touch Will, but he took a step toward him, to gauge the situation. And as the ironic idea had come to his mind, Will simultaneously copied his movement due taking a step in the opposite direction.  
No, this was certainly not the way he had planned the evening's course. He needed a damage limitation.  
And Hannibal did what he usually avoided in company of others.  
He told the truth.

"Will, it was your fault. Your betrayal, and Abigail had to atone. But I have forgiven you. "His tone was imploring, but otherwise hard as mortar. "I love you. I still love you, even though the life of our adoptive daughter is on your conscience. I will always love you, don't forget that."

It brought Will to close his ears with flat palms and shaking violently. Individual, wavy tresses rotated with him.

"Stop it. Just stop!" His face was a rugged mask, a distorted reflection pulling all the suffering, all the self-hatred and all the allegations to the surface that had muttered under his mute, porous facade. Will Graham crumbled in front of him into his component parts as he had many times before and Hannibal could not help it as to name it a miracle, a painting of human destructiveness, he alone was allowed to wring out with a few words. Here and now, Will Graham was raw and delivered, lost in control and churned by a hurricane of his own emotional abuse. He saw the chrysalis of his retina burst and the first glimmer of salty wet rise, flooding the cobalt shores. Clearer and sweeter than blood or sweat could be.

_He wanted to grab, bend over him and lick it out of his eyes._

But Hannibal rarely acted for a coarse pulse's sake. He remained motionless and waited to see what Will would do.  
And Will decided to go.

"What exactly is it that troubles you? The way she died or that I was the one who killed her? " Hannibal called after him disgustingly quiet. Will stopped in the doorway. He did not turn around.  
"Then you should have cut _my_ throat. Not hers." The breaths in between ebbed like knife edges. "You should have left me there, choking on my own blood. Then I would have at least been with her while she ... " A minimal pause in his voice, a fraction of the pitch. Then a puff, the familiar touch of a throbbing temple. "I'm going to bed. Please, sleep in one of the guest rooms tonight. I just… I can't."  
And with this sentence he merged with the gold speckled conceit of the corridor, leaving Hannibal alone.

The fire continued to crackle as if nothing had ever happened.

* * *

Will stumbled up the stairs. His vision enriched with a veil of unshed tears, the further he moved away from Hannibal. He knew his actions would not go unpunished. This would have a sequel, some form of clamp, a bloody task or ordeal, but he currently didn't care much. The pain of loss Abigail had bequeathed to him, contracted as a second twin heart in his chest, clenching and fanning tactless like a rusty machinery. Every muscle in his body felt numb, his sense of touch like borrowed as his fingers sailed over the oak railing, guiding him soon to the upper floor of their house. _Their_ home, _their_ furniture, _their_ fireplace. _Their_ **goddamn** life!

_It can't go on this way, Will. I'm worried about you._

The voice was low, grinding and scraping and wrapped in sticky infatuation, but it did not sound like Hannibal Lecter this time. It sounded like Alana Bloom.

_Alana._

The memory of her clipped a cacaphony of invisible thorns scratching over his ribs. _Stitch stitch stitch_. It was a nuisance.

He knew that Alana and Jack had survived Hannibal's vengeance. A few weeks after their departure from Baltimore, Freddie Lounds had published a side-length article about it on . He had seen pictures of his own, copper brown parched blood pool that soaked the ground and several snapshots from the State Hospital, where Freddie probably sneaked into the hospital rooms (illegally), whipped out and used her camera. A few photos were more blurred than others, but that did not diminish their horror at all. According to her words, Jack Crawford's neck wound had been critical, but was treated successfully. He was on the path of physical recovery. Concerning the psychological aspects... well, that would show in progress of his resumed work. Alana Bloom's damage, however, extended to more than a limited period of weeks or months. The fall out the window had cost her legs. She was paralyzed from the waist down. The second victim, Hannibal had transported into a wheelchair with his actions. He would never see her again, nor Jack, nor the other members of the forensic team. Hannibal would not allow him to ever return to America, not without his guidance and certainly not to pay a visit to _old friends_. He had arranged to be the only person left Will could ask for support and/or affection when he needed it (and he had never been so much in need of these things as in the length of the last four months). It was a checkmate situation, there was neither a start nor end, nor a loophole he could squeeze through.

_"But what bothers us is the whereabouts of opaque FBI profiler _**Will Graham**, who seems to be swallowed by the ground since that horrible evening took place. We can only pray that Lecter hasn't already eaten him for dinner or is planning doing much worse. Until then, he is sought all over the world, together with the true **Chesapeake Ripper**.

... Mr. Graham, if you have access to this website and read this ... may God have mercy on you."

(Oh please, as if a person like Freddie Lounds would suddenly be a fan of God!)

The ending words of the article split Will's inner turmoil once again in opposite / androgynous feelings, even now, a few hours before the beginning of the new year was proclaimed. He did not feel like celebrating. He wanted to go to bed and have a dreamless sleep. Tonight, at least.  
His steps led him to the bedroom he shared with Hannibal, walked right past the bed and straight into the adjoining bath to splash fresh water on his glowing skin and change his clothes. He did not believe that Hannibal would disturb him anymore (not this evening). He slipped out of his pants and shirt and threw them carelessly on the floor. The nights in Florence were pleasantly warm in winter, so a boxer would fully suffice as bed clothing. Half-naked as he was then, he went back into the bedroom.

And instinctively he realized that something had changed. His empathy told him that a second heartbeat echoed in the room.

A breath later, he was grabbed by the neck, turned around and thrown forward so that his back met the mattress. The shock briefly stole the breath from his lungs before it snapped back in a shaking rhythm. The room was dimly lit by the skeleton glow of a full moon, so Will's gaze shot almost blindly through the treacherous dark, as a broad, tall figure rose to him and pushed him down. But even in this hazy light, Will couldn't mistaken Hannibal's striking face. Or the eyes. These bloody, infernal burning eyes. Before he could ask **what the hell** this action should be about, he felt cold, sharpened steel scraping at his throat. A small cut, not worrying, but precise enough to bring out a damp trickle of blood. The warm liquid bubbled mockingly over his skin. And suddenly he knew it was the knife that Hannibal had used to cut him, then Abigail _open_. His scar rebelled at this insight with a stinging fiasco.

They looked at each other. The view of the doctor fell like wax sucked in canopy on his strained, anxious mind. But were his calcified synapses really afraid of torment? Or was it resignation pulling him in? He did not try to fight back. While the former Chesapeake Ripper held a blade to one's neck, it was not advisable to boast disobedience.

"Well, how is it now? Is this what you want? Dying? Do I fulfill your deepest desire now?" he asked him from above. As they would not be here in this bed, skin to skin, but in Hannibal's office of yesteryear, each one in his chair, each other's thoughts addicted on disposing clothes and masquerades. Will licked his dry lips, avoided to gasp for deep breaths so the steel didn't reach him too often.

"Hannibal, get off of me." He ordered in a hushed voice. And slowly, very slowly, real traces of panicked adrenaline flanked his senses, wrapped them up like toad slime.

He felt the weight of the other man similar to a cage of limbs, as it wavered on him, rubbing, pressing him deeper into the resilient nature of the mattress. The smell of his cologne caroused the atmosphere with the resinous impact of sandalwood and patchouli, fully led, elegant pirouettes in his perception. For the senses of vision and touch were currently limited, the smell hit him more intense than usual and he cursed himself for receive it with such hungry joy. Against his will he groaned softly. This man was the devil, and he had him in his claws. It was useless to fight against the fact that he meant something to him. Maybe more than anything what the world could offer beyond.

Hannibal did as he took no notice of it all.

"I can fulfill this desire with ease." he went on, his voice a cemetery bell (_But what lies behind it, behind it?)_ "A single cut, a deep wound and your life will slip on these sheets." He pressed the knife lasciviously to the vulnerable collarbone. "Would this death be more pleasant to you than sharing a life with me? Would it !? "

There. In the last sentence. The punctured tremor of unexpressed grief. Will stared at him, this man who had demolished and manipulated his psyche since their first meeting, the one who had attached him to his murders, had ruined his life and had taken the girl he still called _his daughter_ in dreams. His _lost_daughter.

"You know how I feel about it." he said between clenched teeth. The tears he previously collected now glistened in the moonlight like pebbles on his eyelashes. Did he cry in anger? Out of desperation? Hate / love? Perhaps because of all; perhaps because of none of that. "You know my answers. You always know them! "  
Hannibal was silent. He perched motionless on Will's loins, the weapon in one hand, the other holding onto Will's throat. He seemed to be in thought.

"Will, do you hate me?" he asked eventually. "Tell me. Please."

Will whimpered. A guttural sound escaped him.

"I hate you." The first tear trickled from the corner of his eye and dripped from his temple, down on the sheets. "I hate you, I hate you, I HATE Y-"

A warm, firm pair of lips interrupted his tirade and replaced the presence of the deadly curved blade with a body covering his own like velvet and sand. Will groaned and wrapped his arms around the strong neck, clawing at the shoulder blades of his tormentor / Messiah and bit where he could, till a metallic taste coined in the blend of tongue, mouth and slander. He cried out, as Hannibal lost contact.

"No," he whispered tightly against the swollen mouth, poisonous sweet and ruined as it was. "You can't. And you won't."

And Will's cheeks wetted with a torrid flood of tears because he knew that Hannibal was telling the truth. He could lie to everyone, but not him.

"Kill me." He pleaded. Sobs shook his body. "_Kill me_." Hannibal's answer was to lick the salt from his jaw.

"No, Will. Not until you have forgiven me " he said softly, so unduly fond that Will uttered a humorless laugh before he locked his lips with Hannibal's again, burying the pain inside him like a corpse embedded in musty earth.

He would never forgive Hannibal for what he had done. And Hannibal knew that all too well.  
He would even bet his life on it.

* * *

Will woke up in the middle of the night.

He did not know what had woken him, his dreams had been black and chuckling as tar. His eyes jerked blankly through the air. There was silence in the room. He listened to the panting tambourine of his own breath. Lost, he reached out next to him and felt his way on the other side of the bed, eager, hoping / fearing to touch a warm, hard, pulsating surface. The sheet he was stretched on was soaked in dried sweat and crumbling traces of their mingled cum. He just sensed inhumane iciness that crept gloating over his fingertips. His heartbeat slowed, but not with relief. He squinted, looked to the digital alarm clock. **11:30 a.m.** Sylvester would take place in half an hour.

Hannibal was not here.

The blood rushed like successive lava streams bouncing in his ears. He rose from the bed on wobbly legs, pulled on a pair of trousers and hastily fumbled through the hall, went down the stairs.

"Hannibal?" He called into the silence that girded the whole house like a dome. "Hannibal, are you there?"

Hannibal did not answer. Will felt cold rise in his chest.

"Hannibal!"

He petrified when he saw a strip of glue-yellow light climb into the hall. The kitchen door was ajar. Will swallowed.  
Carefully, like a thief on prey catching, he opened the door.

"Hannibal? What - "

The question stayed stuck in his throat.

Hannibal was sitting on one of the chairs that usually remained disgracefully unused. The light from the ceiling lamp crackled above his hair, made it glow as it would stand in white magnesium flames. He kept his eyes bent down, a few strands falling loose in his forehead. He seemed highly concentrated.

In his arms he hold a bundle of curvatures and sky blue cloth.  
A tiny hand peered out of a fabric wrinkle.  
It was a child's hand.

Will understood faster and better than he had liked to.

"Who ... is this?" he asked immediately. The pulse pounded against his veins. "Hannibal!?" The higher pitch made the psychiatrist react.

"Shhh." He tapped a finger against his lips. A narrowly sprawling smile cut into his mouth. "You'll wake our daughter."

_Our daughter_ (?)

Will's knees were suddenly as unreliable as squandered butter. He would have liked to support himself somewhere, preferably on a wall, but he only found the edge of the counter and clung on it. _In default of a soul the devil puts up with a fly._ And he had Lucifer as his man already ... (Or Lilith? He had once read somewhere that she was fond of eating children whenever they were served.)

"Oh God. Hannibal, what have you done?"

"Saved her life. In order to save ours." the psychatrist said, no audible feeling of guilt on his tongue. He gave him a meaningful look. "Don't worry. Her mother was a drug addict who hawked her body for a few grams of cocaine. I just shortened her suffering and rescued her baby from a miserable fate." A bubbling sound turned his attention to the freight he rocked back and forth on his arms. "Pardon, ma cher, _our_ baby."

Will listened to Hannibal's words, not able to speak. His thoughts raced like trains on a crowded station. It shouldn't be so easy to steal a child. It shouldn't be so easy to remove it from the incubator of a hospital. It really… shouldn't.  
But what could Will say? Hannibal Lecter was a man who followed his own rules. The excisting statutes and laws for other mortals were turned, changed and ignored when it suited him. He murdered people when they were rude and cooked their organs for next day's lunch. Should he still be surprised that he kidnapped a newborn then? _For him_?

For it was clear that Hannibal had brought her just because of him. Because he missed Abigail. And because he could not bear her loss and would go crazy about it sooner or later.

It was hard to decide how he should feel now.

Finally he tried to pull himself together, loosened his grip on the counter and stepped closer to Hannibal. He sat down next to him and looked into the fabric opening from which a chubby face flashed. Cream-white skin, skull provided with first spurs of ash blonde curls. Her nose wrinkled in her sleep. She looked peaceful. It almost broke Will's heart.

"Is ... is she well?" He almost choked on his own syllables. The desire to reach out and touch her, to feel that she was real, was overwhelming and at the same time he was captured by the terrible fear that he would hurt or drop her. She looked so fragile ...

"She's born prematurely. Impatient to wait one more month. But we will coddle her." Hannibal said, reading Will's thoughts easily (or smelling his angst). He held the vital bundle towards the profiler. "Do you want to hold her?" Oh, this fucking innocence in his baritone.

_You bastard_Will scolded him in thought. **Of course** he wanted to.

He behaved somewhat clumsily, as Hannibal handed him the baby, but as soon as it fumbled with his body, he breathed a sigh of relief.

A few seconds later, the baby opened its eyes and radiographed him with curious naivety. Her gaze was filled with two circles of Prussian blue.

A hot shame scratched up in Will's cheeks. He had awakened her. _Oh 'great'._

"Hey, little one." he stammered awkwardly. Then he suddenly found himself in a 'click' moment. Blue eyes and blonde curls ...

This infant could just as the product of a Gensymbiose between Hannibal and him. The next words of the doctor only confirmed his suspicions.

"She likes you." he said, satisfaction noticeably represented in his voice. "I saw her and knew she belonged to us."

Will sighed. And pressed the little one closer. She cheered cooing, probably grateful for the heat, Will's undisguised body brought out in flowing quantities.

"How did you kill her mother?"

"I increased the dose of morphine to a level her emaciated immune system couldn't cope with." Hannibal said. He placed a chaste kiss on Will's skull. One arm lay like a monument around his shoulders. "She died quickly."

Will hesitated a little, but then leaned fully into the touch, snuggled up against the psychatrist's chest.

"You could have get caught." he mumbled. If he wanted to sound reproachful, he failed miserably. Hannibal's breath caressed his ear.

"I haven't."

"We should bring her back."

"Where to?" The fingers of the elder man drew lazy circles on Will's bare upper arm. "According to the _tragic_ death of her mother, she has no family member left. We may place her on the steps of an orphanage and hope that she'll be adopted. Only God knows how how her life will be then... "

Will closed his eyes. Just the imagination of what Hannibal's words had planted in his brain was a single, inhuman cabaret. _This Son of a bitch._

"You're cruel." he judged. And he had not even to look at Hannibal to know that he was smiling.

"Me and cruel? I see how you look at her." He leaned forward, a loving whisper in Will's eardrum. "You're much crueler than I'll ever be."

It gave Will a chill.

Before he could say something, thousands of deafening explosions and blasting calls started outside the house. Will did not need a clock. It was midnight. The people said goodbye to the last year.

Outside, the coal-black sky dunked in a swarm of iridescent missiles and radio screens. The baby craned his head excitedly in the direction the sounds were coming from. Will chuckled.

"She'll think the fireworks are for her."

"Why shouldn't they? On Sylvester we celebrate a new start. She is ours."

"How do we call her?"

"The choice of the name I leave to you." Hannibal bowed his head. "We could call her Abigail."

Will forced a smile.

"No," he said. He took a deep breath. "Mischa. I like Mischa."

He saw it as the iron mesh of Hannibal Lecter's control broke for the duration of a wing completely. He knew better than anyone else on Mother Earth, what this name and the associated memories unleashed, which sorrow and sweet agony it caused to this man. He knew that Mischa milled a hole in his heart, a wound, and that the doctor decided he should be the one to heal it. He felt that it was time for a second skin to cover this healed wound. To permanently seal the fire. (A pure safety measure).

This man was a beast. He was a psychopath, a monster, a sad clown who wanted to unlearn what it's like to cry for his love.

But he was **his** clown nevertheless. And if it went that far he would shed the tears Hannibal wasn't able to share himself.

"Mischa Lecter." He repeated, clear and unblemished as he would talk about the next day's shopping. His timid smile matched the disrooted expression on Hannibal's face perfectly.

"How's that? Okay?"

Hannibal had to clear his throat; the sole sign of what Will's choice did to him inwardly.

"It's a good name." he confirmed. More he did not say to this, but his hand went to Will's waist immediately and reinforced his grip. He let it happen without asking questions. "How about watching the fireworks?"

Will looked searchingly to _Mischa_, who showed no ambition to fall asleep that soon again. He nodded.

"Sure." He decided, however, wedged his fingers into Hannibal's sleeve before he could turn around. "Wait a minute."

He leaned forward and kissed him. Mischa was hidden between their bodies and yet it was as if they were closer than they had ever been under tangled sheets. They stayed so until Mischa kicked and Will had to hold her with both hands. Hannibal's eyelids were still half closed, as they parted. His iris shone dark.

"Why?" His voice was indefinable.

"You know why. It's the custom. We need all luck we can get." Will shrugged. He went past the psychiatrist, but only entered the balcony when Hannibal followed behind him. "Happy New Year." he said over his shoulder.

If Hannibal returned the phrase, it hushed underneath the ignititon of another unholy color hail, followed by Mischa's happy squealing.

* * *

Hello again :3

Hope the story was okay and you enjoyed reading it.

Comments and faves will give our cute Mischa cuddles and kisses from her new Daddys (sorry I had to XD)


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